Low cost tangible glove for translating sign gestures to speech and text in Hindi language

Abstract

Vocal Communication is a way to convey our thoughts, messages and information. However, each of us is not gifted to be able to share our thoughts in verbal mode with others due to some physical disabilities. The deaf and the mute are the one who face extreme difficulty in conveying their messages to others. Normally deaf and the mute people use sign language for communication but it turns out to be a difficult when others are not able to understand the sign language. A number of devices are available that converts the human gestures to English speech and text but no such device is available for Hindi Language. Hindi is the most spoken and National language in India and is widely used in the country. Keeping a pace with advent of technology there is a desperate need of cost effective devices which could convert the sign language into speech/text in Hindi to establish an independent communication and movement for deaf and mute people in every sphere of society. In this paper, we propose a tangible interface using a customized glove equipped with flex sensors. These sensors are placed across the length of fingers and the thumb. Hand gestures can be captured by the digital glove which are then converted to speech/text so that it could easily be understood by the common people. The experiments conducted with the design prototype have shown significant interaction improvements among the society and deaf-mute people. The experiments on modeling and improving the prototype is going on to improvise the interaction specially for mobile devices.